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August 17 – 21
Explore antique tractors and other equipment at Columbus, Ohio’s Center of Science and Industry. Go to www.cosi.org

August 30
Launch into the sun’s cosmic neighborhood in a show at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium. See bit.ly/SNsolarnbhdAugust 31
In Portland, learn about the technology behind iPhone games. Ages 21 and up. Go to www.omsi.edu/afterdark

“CLIMBERS” PRONE TO ILLNESS — “Nonhazardous” occupations can be dangerous for men who work their way up. Eighty-four out of 139 young men between the ages of 22 and 32 who had attained managerial positions showed more illness than 55 co-workers who stepped into the same kind of job right out of college.... The men who had worked their way up displayed both acute and chronic symptoms,...

Some physicists spend their days exploring the three dimensions of space, the four dimensions of spacetime or even the 11 dimensions of something called M-theory. Other researchers are content with just two.

But fewer dimensions doesn’t mean less science. For seven years, researchers have been enjoying a two-dimensional playground of new...

In a cave hugging South Africa’s lush southern coastline, Curtis Marean suspects he has cornered a wily Stone Age crew that brought humans back from extinction’s brink. These plucky refugees of continent-wide desolation were able to pull off such a stunning evolutionary turnaround because they got lucky. A coastal oasis near the bottom of the world spread its sheltering arms in the nick of...

Though the diagnostic code scrawled on a doctor’s chart might suggest otherwise, each person who lives with an autism spectrum disorder has a very private disease. An avalanche of new genetic data shows clearly that there is no single culprit in autism. Each case stems from a unique jumble of genetic and environmental triggers, which makes figuring out one clear cause for every person’s...

Megadisasters sell, and megavolcanoes sell more than most: Turn on any documentary channel to see mountains belching ash clouds across towns­people paralyzed by fear.

Oppenheimer, a volcanologist, has served as consultant on some of these films. But he tops them all with a new book, heavy on scientific detail and light on dramatic froth, chronicling eruptions that really...

Weeds, according to one definition, are simply plants that are growing in the wrong place. Some have invaded gardens from the surrounding countryside, and others escaped cultivation to infest the landscape. But in almost every case, weeds — whether you think of them as adaptable opportunists or as botanical thugs — thrive in human company.